The First Ecumenical Synod and Its Significance

At the Synodal Divine Liturgy celebrated on Sunday, June 1st 2025, at the Sacred Metropolitan Church of Athens, presided over by His Beatitude Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, Hieronymos, for the 1700th anniversary of the convening of the First Ecumenical Synod in 325 in Nicaea of Bithynia, His Eminence Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou, Hierotheos, Vice-President of the Permanent Holy Synod, spoke on the topic: “The First Ecumenical Synod and Its Significance.”

The Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod, during this Easter period, leading up to the feast of Pentecost, is wonderful, and rightly the Sacred Synod of the Church of Greece determined to celebrate it magnificently. This is done with a Synodal Divine Liturgy, with hymns and speeches meet for God, with a convocation of the Hierarchy of the Church of Greece and with events befitting this great feast, with the completion of 1,700 years since the convocation of the First Ecumenical Synod, which was called “Holy” and “Great” and became the model for the other Ecumenical Synods that followed, in which we, the Bishops, gave a confession that we will abide by their decisions.

This brief eucharistic homily, by decision of the Sacred Synod, also falls within this framework.

Holy Martyr Stephen the New in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Venerable Stephen was born in Constantinople in 715, to pious parents, John and Anna. He lived in asceticism from his youth in the Monastery of Saint Auxentios, which was in Bithynia. The monastery was located on a high place, called the Mountain of Saint Auxentios. He became abbot of the monks there. The fame of his spiritual struggles was heard everywhere and the fragrance of his virtues led many to him. He died a martyr’s death due to the veneration of the holy icons, during the reign of Constantine, called Copronymos. Before his martyric end, Copronymos sentenced him to eleven months in chains and prison. Then he ordered that they drag him along the ground and stone him like the Protomartyr Stephen, hence he was called Stephen the New. They then beat him with a club on the brain and after crushing his head, he gave up his spirit in 767.

Prologue in Sermons: November 28

 

The More a Person is Slandered by Slanderers, the More the Lord Glorifies Them

November 28*

(From the Life of Saint John Chrysostom)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

When our enemies and slanderers begin to slander us among others, spreading bad rumors about us and vilifying our name, we usually become despondent, fainthearted, and say, "Now I'm lost, now everyone will consider me a bad person and will despise me." But in reasoning like this, we are mistaken. When we hear negative words spoken about ourselves, we must always remember that there is an all-seeing and just God above us, that He will not allow our enemies to triumph over us, and that the evil they do to us is always ready to turn and will turn to our good.

Saint James the Persian in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Saint James was a Christian of Christian parents, living in the city of Beth Lapat, in the land of the Persians, of an honorable and illustrious lineage, and greatly honored by King Yazdegerd. For this reason, namely, because the king of the Persians loved him very much, he distanced himself from the Christian faith and followed the king, thus leading to perdition by denying Christ. But when his mother and wife broke off their communion with him, because he preferred the love of the king to the love of Christ, and for temporary glory he chose eternal shame and condemnation – something they accused him of in letters they sent him – he was wounded in soul and distanced himself from the vain religion of the king, whereupon he began to weep for all the sins he had committed, as he had apostatized from Christ. For this reason, he was brought to trial, while the king was very unhappy with the event. The result was that he suffered a bitter death, with the division of the harmony of the body: the hands and feet and arms, little by little, so that only the head and the torso remained. Then they also removed his head with a knife.

Saint Damaskinos the Studite: Teacher of the Enslaved Nation

 

By Konstantinos Holevas, 
Political Scientist

To the Hellenism that was wintering from the Turkish conquest, Divine Providence sent a great figure in the 16th century. He is Saint Damaskinos the Studite, whom our Church honors on November 27. A cleric, scholar, militant Orthodox, author of wonderful books, wise, modest and ascetic, Damaskinos was an excellent Shepherd in the two Diocese where the Ecumenical Patriarchate sent him. First to the Diocese of Liti and Rentini (today's Metropolis of Lagada) and then to the Metropolis of Nafpaktos and Arta, as it was then called.

Damaskinos was born in Thessaloniki probably in 1520. He studied in Constantinople and had as his teacher the famous Theophanes Eleavoulkos Notaras. He was associated with the historic Monastery of Stoudios, which is why he was called a Studite. He collaborated closely with important Patriarchs such as Metrophanes, Joasaph II the Magnificent and Jeremias the Tranos. He was elected Bishop of Liti and Rentini in 1560 and his ordination took place in Thessaloniki and in particular in the well-known Church of the Rotunda, today the Church of Saint George. Due to the Turkish occupation, the Metropolitan Church of Hagia Sophia of Thessaloniki had been converted into a mosque and for a time the Rotunda, known as the Church of the Archangels, served as the Metropolitan Church.